Bankers are Wankers!

It's my blog and I can swear if I want to!

I said I would post about the credit crunch a while ago, and I have picked today to get on my soap box because e25 is featured on the BBC's working lunch homepage because of our new financing deals using private lenders.

If you operate an inefficient business model, the internet will catch up with you eventually and now it's the turn of the banks. Offering savers only 1-2% interest whilst charging borrowers 7%+ is daylight robbery and yet, even then, banks are not prepared to lend - not even established businesses with strong track records.

Since our incompetent government are unable to do anything about it, even when they own these companies, the banks are now going to face the much tougher regulation of entrepreneurship.

There are now already several companies like First Funding and Zopa that use a website as a marketplace for lenders and borrowers to search out each other and there is no doubt that this will gain more ground over time.

Those banks that don't go bust are going to disentegrate as more and more people switch to internet intermediaries and quite frankly their disappearance will have me smiling all the way to the 'coffee shop' that most banks will be turned into!

Lesson for the day: Innovate or die!

Tesla Launch Party

Last week was a tough one for socialising - in addition to the Indian Summer at the Dorchester I also attended the launch party for the Tesla, electric car at their swanky new showroom in Cheval Place - yes, that's right, former home of Segrave Club. (Let's hope they don't suffer the same fate of their investors pulling the plug on them.)

By now I think most people have seen this car at various shows all over the place so it was mainly an excuse for a few glasses of bubbly.

At £98k for a car with a range of only 200 miles, I cannot see a market for this car at all - except perhaps for the first 50 as 'collector's items'. On the other hand, I think it is a must have for a supercar club - it is such a novel car that everyone will want to try it out so I was going there to buy one of the early release cars for this Summer. To my surprise they announced that they will be launching a right-hand drive version in 2010 - so I kept my money in my pocket (so to speak) and will talk to them at the end of the year.

The guy with his hands up in the picture is CEO Elon Musk.

Indian Summer

e25 was one of the sponsors of the Indian Summer Charity Event at the Dorchester last night so Ilke 'threw on' a sari and we popped down to Park Lane in the 'Maser' for a night of champagne and spice.

It was totally cool being able to arrive there in style but then leave the car at the Quadriga parking lot just across the road to be collected in the morning. I don't think many of our members know about this free parking facility.

Hollywood beckons

In the past week I have twice been involved with TV...



Last week I was on Luxe TV explaining the logic of supercar club membership to a completely new audience in the Middle East and across Asia - enquiries went crazy.



This week I was filming with BBC2 Working Lunch extolling the virtues of my latest favourite business First Funding which allows private individuals to lend directly to businesses instead of going through banks - I will do a separate post on this topic soon because the implications of this trend are enormous! It will go on air on July 6th, 1230 BBC2.

MotorExpo

I chose the first day of the tube strike to visit MotorExpo in Canary Wharf. We decided not to exhibit this year but I thought I would check it out to see if we made a good decision or not and it was definitely not worth the 2.5 hours spent in the car both on the way there and back.



I had a good chat with Mark and Lizzi from the Spyder club about a potential collaboration to offer superbikes to our members - the truth is I have absolutely no clue how much interest there would be in it. Any e25 members out there reading this, please let me know if you would be interested in superbikes on the fleet.



The highlight of the show was the new Range Rover - the interior trim is totally gorgeous and the front screen really does allow the passenger to watch telly at the same time the driver is using the SatNav - it blows your mind! Note to self: Must talk to my friends at JLR about getting a special deal on one of these.

Bom dia!

I have just spent the last 2 days with a party from Portugal who are very interested in opening our first international branch. Their plan is to serve the affluent Lisbon/Cascais market as well as keep some of the cars in Faro for the wealthy Brits staying at the luxury hotspots like Quinta do Lago; obviously the e25 brand is well established amongst the latter crowd.

It would be totally cool if they also offered boats.

But the best bit was they thought we should change our name to CR25 in order to have wider appeal in the portuguese market - something to do with a famous footballer apparently.

Interesting facts that I learnt about Portugal:
Nando's is not Portuguese - it was invented in South Africa (by a portuguese guy) - the portuguese do not eat hot food (unless they are going out for a curry!)
Afternoon tea was introduced to the UK by a portuguese queen who was apparently sent over here to marry a king. He did not like her and sent her home but obviously hung on to the tea concept.

Adeus

Scooterman

Last week my wife and I went to our favourite romantic London restaurant (Oxo Tower) to celebrate my birthday (still under 40, just!) and for the first time ever I thought I would try out this Scooterman concept.

This meant we had the pleasure of travelling there and back in the Maserati Quattroporte which was a nice alternative to smelly cabs. It cost £49 which is cheaper than taking smart cabs each way, and about the same as taking smelly cabs each way.

The poor 'scooterman' got a thorough grilling from me on the way home as I tried to de-construct the business model and see if it made sense for us to offer a similar service to our members.

In summary, given that he only does 2 drives a night (since everyone wants to go home around the same time!) carting a scooter around just did not make sense - it would have been cheaper, less hassle and almost as quick to get to the second job by tube!

Of course without the scooter, the cost of the job could be a lot lower, and as far as e25 is concerned would increase the number of cars with which we could offer this service since boot space would not be an issue. Of course where the second passenger would sit would still be a challenge in the real supercars. Also, we could take the car back to base, saving the member from having to return it the next morning. I think I'll call it Supercarman (Superman for short?)and run a free trial next Winter as a tactic to encourage more people booking cars out mid-week.

Britney's Back

Ilke and I were guests of Credit Suisse last night for the Britney "Lip-Sync" concert - although to complain about her lack of singing is kind of missing the point - this was more of a modern circus show than a concert which, to be fair, is exactly how it had been billed "The Circus - starring Britney Spears"...and she is a great dancer.

CS have lots of clients with strong motorsport interests and we are trying to figure out ways in which we can collaborate to combine our motoring enthusiasm (and budgets) to provide bigger and better motoring events for both our members and their clients. But don't worry about all that...enjoy the pictures.

A nationwide club!

Congratulations to Jayce Doughty - our first member in London to have used his credits at another branch.

Of course the big prize of having a network of e25 branches is that members for all clubs can pop over to other locations on business or pleasure and drive different cars in new locations and Jayce did just this. Here's what he had to say on the experience:

"To be honest I didn't know what to expect heading out to Northern Ireland for a couple of days exploring the area. I was pleasantly surprised that within 5 minutes of landing I had a call from the é25 Belfast boys to tell me they were outside with the car.

I found everyone at é25 Belfast to be as helpful and friendly as all the other é25 personnel I have met, and they gave me some great pointers as to the places I really should see….and the roads I should drive. Even with the fact that they were having a very busy weekend doing some PR at the NW200 Motorbike Racing, they still managed to be there to collect the car from the airport even though I was flying out on the Sunday.

Great service with a smile, I look forward to making use of more of the planned é25 bases in the future."

As we get more e25 clubs within the group, the advantage of being an e25 member will put all other clubs in the shade - here's to global domination!!